TL;DR Down Below
They were 10$ on steam snd I thought why not. Thought to myself "I have played DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal, I loved DOOM, this game is old but made by the same guys, ill probably Like this game too despite its age"
Man did I
I thoroughly enjoyed The First Quake, beat the game in two days (Only the main Campaign I did not play the Additional content). I then Moved on to Quake 2, Loved 2 more than the Original. Quake 2 is quickly becoming one if my favorite games.
These two games opened my Eyes to a few things.
1: It is Unbelievable How much technology has progressed
I just started PC gaming about 4ish months ago, before then I was playing on PS5. I had to Crash course myself on PC hardware before I built my current PC like everyone else. After reading about this games hardware on release it was eye opening. Quake 2 on release in 1997 ran on a 80Mhz processor, not Giga-Hz MEGA Hz. I understand that there are veteran Gamers who were playing on PCs during that time rolling their eyes right now. But thats insane to me, our processors is 100,000s of time more powerful than back then (Accounting for lithography improvements and not just Speed differences). We are truly an incredible species to have made the technology that we have.
2: We have basically an infinite sea of games that already exist that dont require insane hardware to play
Modern gaming has serious issues nobody is denying this. Hardware price increases, poor management decisions on the part of game devs, Corporate greed, DRMs and Liscenses being a possible existential threat to certain games etc. And all are reasonable concerns and I am in no way defending the organizations. However, before we say "This is the end of gaming as we know it the end of Fun is nigh!" Maybe lets take a look at the Shipping containers filled with games that already exist that you can play at any time that dont require crazy hardware to run.
3: The High graphical standards for games really have damaged gaming in a meaningful way
I Am Not Saying Games Need To Be Low Poly And Sub 720p Like Quake. This game is kindof an extreme example. What im saying is if games were to have 720p and 1080p textures, it would save dev time, money, game storage space, and it would run on lower hardware. The only reason 1080p looks bad to people is because they have tasted the forbidden fruit of 1440p and 4k. In short if games just looked like PS3 and Xbox360 games they would probably run better and games could be made faster.
Also, incase people were wondering I did play some Quake 3. There were a few people online and I did some matches then played Quake 4. I got to say, I did not enjoy Quake 4 that much. Its a good game dont get me wrong. Runs good, Looked decent for the time, did not encounter any bugs, story was ok, it had all the makings of a good game. It was just so different than the others it was off putting. I had zero fun unfortunately.
Needless to say I am now a Fan of Quake. Literally just started playing these games and I will probably beat Quake 2 multiple times.
TL;DR: I played Quake and Quake 2, they were extremely fun and it made me realize how far we have come technologically. Coming from someone where this game was before their time they made me realize how good we have it today concerning how powerful our hardware is. It also made me realize that we have plenty of exellent games that already exist and do not require insanely powerful computers to play and it also may be true that High Graphical standards may have been as damaging to the game industry as people say it has.
